I can't recall a time, not even once, when I found pushnotifs in a browser useful or even desirable.
Even on my phone I block 99% of them because it's all just noise.
Even on my phone I block 99% of them because it's all just noise.
I'm aware of that. iOS is a proprietary OS and how it does things isn't all that relevant to me in this context. The web is a different matter and I've yet to see a use case of push notifications that served me. But I've seen 100's of websites that I have zero reason to see as useful applications trying to trick me into allowing them to use push notifications.
From an android POV, the benefit of this feature is that it allows you to install fully featured apps while keeping them in the web sandbox where you have fine-grained control over permissions.
FF does pretty much the same thing.
With phone apps I sort of get it: you are already installing something and clearly have a long-term relationship with the provider of such an app and the app likely has functionality that you need badly enough that having the app alert you makes sense.
But for me the web is 'transient', even as the maker of a SPA I wouldn't dream of bugging my users outside of their own decision to come back to the site. All this needy software is - to me - just a source of irritation.
Maybe the OS should run and maintain that for you. Just as gmail automatically sorts your emails into different categories (and spam), maybe so the OS or the browser should sort notifications.
That being said, it's been years since any apps have tried to push promotions onto me through notifications. I honestly don't know what app hellscape you and so many others online seem to live in; to me, notification ads have died a swift death somewhere around 2012.
No. I can check my email on my own time.
> Messaging apps?
Same. I can check my messages when I feel I have time to.
> Taxi apps notifying you when the taxi arrives?
Not really. Usually I can see when the taxi is arriving. (I almost never call a taxi anyways).
> Calendar?
Yes, that's the only case in my opinion when notifications are useful, otherwise I tend to forget meetings (not that all meetings are useful though).
You don't see any utility in getting alerted when you get a text message? Most messaging apps allow you to mute threads, so silencing an active group chat is easy, but you don't have anybody in your life you want to be able to get through to you ASAP?
> Usually I can see when the taxi is arriving. (I almost never call a taxi anyways).
Sure, if you're waiting out in front of the building for a short time. Sometimes ride-sharing / taxi apps have a long wait. Most people appreciate being able to wait indoors, instead of sitting on the stoop for 20 minutes waiting for your ride to come. This is possible because the app will notify you when your driver is getting close enough that you should go outside.
I've seen many apps on iOS that just feel… weird. Especially the scroll. It's my understanding that many such apps are just web views.
Anyone doing non-native apps on my phone will almost[0] never get money from me.
[0] There has to be the occasional exception, I suppose.
Also web apps are not censored by the app store guidelines.
This is well understood by the adtech industry and is why so many websites push apps in the first place.
Do you think an iPhone with the tracking blocker engaged is still a richer source of data than the web app on an iPhone? Facebook claims that Apple's privacy protections cost them $10 billion of revenue the first year.
When i close the webpage, that page is gone. It's not running in the background silently collecting data. With a properly configured browser (a few extensions, no third party cookies, or even separate containers), it doesn't have much data to gather in the first place.
Neither is any of the apps on custom F-Droid repos.
and before you whine about taxis, it only takes a half second to open the app. If you need a ding on your phone you should probably walk home.
I am a little (just a little) more tolerant on my phone.
An taxi app might be acceptable because it has real world usage, but I imagine it would be abused pretty heavily with "first mile is free if you take a taxi tonight".
Email and messaging apps should not notify me. I will open them if/when I have the time and batch process them.
My ability to concentrate is already under enough assult and doesn't need to be harmed further, and while I am in favour of each person doing what they want, from a societal point of view we need way fewer distractions, not more.
Most of my phone notifications come in silently, and I won't tolerate spammy notifications, but I do want notifications for low priority/async operations so that I don't need to remember to check each app for anything actionable: the SRE book talks about "page", "ticket", and "log" messages; a noisy notification is a "page", a silent one is a "ticket", and if I want to see "log"-type messages then I can check the relevant app.
I never treat text communications as real-time communications, and I'm not about to start now.
I'll never forget being awoken because someone felt the need to page the SysOp at 2 AM on the Compaq laptop running my BBS in my closet.
Facts! It always feels intrusive. I have them blocked by default on mobile and desktop. However, I also have all notifications on my phone disabled as well as permanent do not disturb mode.
Property should not make demands for attention.
I got flak because it couldn't be run on iOS with notifications. But everyone is in front of a computer all the time anyway, so they just used a desktop browser.
The problem with notifications is the hyper competitive attention market on the web, which pushes the websites "optimize" notifications for eyeballs instead of UX.
Web notifications are dead as the web itself. Thankfully, Apple sensibly implemented the notifications through requiring the website be added on home screen.
Let's see if we end up with websites forcing people save it to the homescreen to "read the rest of the article".
As long as the web "content" is a bait and the content is the adds there wouldn't anything new on the web. Wast majority of the mobile usage is on Android and we haven't seen the golden age of mobile web apps, I don't think it will change with Apple embracing the notifications.
Could be good for non-kosher apps but the problem with that is the centralised nature of push notifications delivery. So if they want your web app killed, they can just kill it by not providing you the service.